[paragsachania]

Originally Posted by sandeepmohan

Isn't this the norm in Bangalore? Bescom used to cut power in Cox Town even for a light drizzle.

Indeed nothing changes and it has been a norm but while peeping out through the balcony you see that it is windy and then hear a mild blast like sound with a spark you know the power goes down instantly. Believe me, this is the case since more than 6 months now and I see BESCOM folks attend the transformer but never find a solution except for a temporary fix.

For your primary router, I would not place it right up against a roof or what looks like a step just before the roof line. You knock off range like this.

Agree and in fact I wanted to place this router upside down but that would expose the LAN cable making an ugly U-turn along with wires for the power adapter. This would allow me to straighten the antenna pointing to the floor rather than the walls to get better range.

However, let me tell you this. When I first moved here more than 4 years back and got a broadband connection from BBNL (Not BSNL), I was amused how the router wasn't able to penetrate signals into my master bedroom where I work from. I was wondering if this had anything to do with the router (One that is working a secondary router now) for which I simply removed this router and placed it on the TV Cabinet (3ft from ground) and tested the signal strength (without internet of course). Even then there was hardly any difference. Later I tested by connecting to SSID of my old ADSL router too and the case was same. It is then I realised there is a serious problem with either the number of walls or the materials used inside the wall too. In coming months, I received queries from a lot of my apartment friends on just one topic: Is there anything which will improve signals at their home in particular rooms? It is then I realized that it was just not me who was facing this. If I scan WiFi from either our living room or the master bedroom, I get to see a lot of SSIDs from adjacent flats (or few from a floor above or below) with EXT meaning many were using range extenders and this only increased post working from home becoming a normal last year. In summary, the most ideal placement for the main router was living room, a place where we cannot pull the cables unless we were still doing our interiors and can afford to route the wires through the walls. It is too late now!

The way you have positioned the second router is perfect, just straighten the antenna.

This was easy for me since it never needed any LAN cable to be connected and I could place it anywhere.

If you've seen a schematic of how those antenna's work, you will understand.

Oh yes, I did all that. In fact I would adjust the angle of the antennae and then test the signal strength and the speeds to experiment which position works better since the range is always perpendicular to the position of antenna. I had seen quite a few videos and articles around this.

What I can still do is try to mount the primary router upside down (and make it look less messier too). This will allow me to lower the antennae that I can't now due to its current mounting position - The antennae moves in all other directions except down as you can notice. Apart from this, I want to try the same set-up on a dual band router too.

I tried this bridging thing with an old BSNL+TP Link router and it was a nightmare. This was several years ago when my folks used a BSNL connection. While I did get it to work, I could not get the TP Link to hook up to the BSNL router automatically when the power failed. I suspect it was the BSNL router that was the culprit.

It was for confirming the seamless hand-off that I tested by switching off the second router and checked if it was losing connection or holding onto the weaker signals from the first router and indeed it was holding onto the first one.

However, what I did for all the devices at home was to let them forget the all SSIDs at home and reconnect again. Without this, I noticed few of the devices were showing extremely poor strength may be because they weren't aware of a secondary network with the same SSID and were hooked to the main router only.

[hondafanboy]

Originally Posted by Thad E Ginathom

Please post the LAN and WAN setup screens from both your router and your airtel box.

Also show exactly how they are cable together,

This should make it easy for folks here to troubleshoot. Without this, we have no clue.

Hello, My apologies for the late reply. I am sorted on this front now as we were able to pull a network cable from the living room where the router with UPS is located to the bedroom. No need to rely on the additional router or wifi now. Thanks checking on this and all the suggestions.

[sandeepmohan]

Originally Posted by paragsachania

In summary, the most ideal placement for the main router was living room, a place where we cannot pull the cables unless we were still doing our interiors and can afford to route the wires through the walls.

A central location in the house is what would be ideal. Be it the living or dining room. Each house has a different layout. Cable routing, even externally can be done with the right cable covers. If you can run it along floor ledge, it won't look so bad. Optic fiber cables are about 1mm with their shielding so they will slot nice along the ledge.

The alternative option is to run a cat5 or 6 cable externally (outside the house) and to the required location where you put a second router.

[paragsachania]

Originally Posted by sandeepmohan

A central location in the house is what would be ideal. Be it the living or dining room. Each house has a different layout.

Hence I was referring to my case that its the Living room since it is centrally located.

If you can run it along floor ledge, it won't look so bad.

I have done this for my home theatre wiring for the surround speakers but now if I need to pull it to connect 2 routers, it will have to cross few doors as well and then for such proposals you always have rejections by the home ministry.

The alternative option is to run a cat5 or 6 cable externally (outside the house) and to the required location where you put a second router.

This is ruled out in our apartment. One reason why even the existing Dish Antenna (no longer a subscriber) is MDU and all cables run through the cable shaft.

[bhp_maniac]

Originally Posted by paragsachania

As another test, while sitting at my working desk, I turned off the second router and noticed that the connection to WiFi didn’t drop but the signal strength plunged to less than 2 bars because now the system was connected to SSID of the main router, signal of which has always been low where I sit. I then turned on the second router and waited for it to boot and in about half a minute the signal strength on my laptop was back to 100%, seamlessly without a drop in the connection. With this set-up of a primary router as AP and secondary router in Bridge, I spent 2 days to ensure that it was working without a glitch. It worked flawlessly for both of us and only after this I ordered a UPS for the second router and installed it.

Great set up, looks neat and tidy as well. Quick question on the hand-off. Have you tried calls on any VoWIFI networks from home? I tried a similar set up at my home with a TP link WDR3600 and 841N, but ran into call drop issue on Jio VoWIFI. I haven't tried the wireless bridging, but a wired backhaul. Long story short, I ended up trying the set up with openwrt running on both devices and enabling 802.11r roaming. This solved the issue for iPhone which are now roaming seamlessly, but Androids still remain stubborn and doesn't roam to the strongest AP

[mankuthimma]

Originally Posted by Ragul

I just found some reviews of the newer Archer C6 rated for 800mbps on 5Ghz (compared to 1300 foor the C7) that rate it a better value buy than the C7

Thanks so much for this suggestion. So I went ahead and bought the Archer C6 + RE200 combo. It has replaced my earlier setup of NetGear N300 router repeater which was not sufficient to keep up with the changing bandwidth needs. I have been running this new setup from past 2 weeks, I must say it does a neat job for an entry level mesh network setup at a budget friendly price for single floor apartment houses.

The placement of the router is not at an ideal position, thanks to the layout of the rooms and the nature of walls in our house, but still all the blind spots have magically disappeared and the devices are no more starved of the required bandwidth. The litmus test was the school reopening this week and my daughter is mighty happy with the speed and stability of the connection for her online classes.

In terms of absolute numbers, the best bandwidth obviously is the wired, now gives out full 300 mbps as against 80 mbps earlier. However, wifi speed in the best location, same room as that of router, reads ~80 mbps against ~40 mbps previously. Is this the norm? Anything else to do improve wifi speeds ? At the farthest point, it is now ~25 mbps as against ~8 mbps earlier.
But irrespective of the numbers, all the devices are happy getting their fair share of bandwidth in most parts of the houses where ever they are used. One learning is to include gigabit ethernet port and dual band wifi chip as mandatory requirements while shopping gadgets henceforth.

One minor issue with iOS devices - they take a long time to reconnect wifi after wakeup. Android phone and laptops dont have this issue. I have tried forget network and rejoining, but doesnt seem to help. Any other setting to look for ?

[Ragul]

Originally Posted by mankuthimma

One minor issue with iOS devices - they take a long time to reconnect wifi after wakeup. Android phone and laptops dont have this issue. I have tried forget network and rejoining, but doesnt seem to help. Any other setting to look for ?

Good to hear it's working out!

I currently use 150mbps broadband since the many months I've been using 802.11ac and I get the equivalent performance in speed test on both wired and wireless in the same room - roughly 136-146mbps. The best way to test Wifi only is to put a large 1gb file in the usb share of router and download it from different locations in the house and watch the top bar for Speed indicator. Be careful not to confuse MBps and Mbps!

[manim]

Got the Asus RT-AX55 a few days back.

Ran some tests with it with my Jiofiber 100 mbps connection, and it works well. I laid CAT6 cable going around the other side of my house, by drilling holes in the walls. Took about 20+ meters. Now I am covered well. In future I may get more routers if necessary for an AiMesh setup.

Now why did I select this model:
It is a latest model by Asus and the cheapest WiFi-6 router. I don't have any WiFi-6 devices currently though.

I am not looking at improving speeds, 100 mbps is more than enough for me, but WiFi-6 is much better equipped to handle busy networks with lots of devices. I predict that all household gadgets will start using WiFi in the future.

One nuisance of this router is that the led-lights are positioned at the bottom and practically invisible.

[paragsachania]

Originally Posted by bhp_maniac

Quick question on the hand-off. Have you tried calls on any VoWIFI networks from home?

I have had few instances so far where I had to run into another room due to other rooms occupied by wife or daughter for their official calls and online classes respectively, while I am on a call and so far the experience has been stable.

This is with Microsoft Teams while the experience with WhatsApp calls also has been similar with no drops.

Originally Posted by sandeepmohan

For your primary router, I would not place it right up against a roof or what looks like a step just before the roof line. You knock off range like this. The way you have positioned the second router is perfect, just straighten the antenna. If you've seen a schematic of how those antenna's work, you will understand.

The urge to try out the right placement made me spend some time over the weekend and I placed the router upside down, so the antennae would point more towards the living room floors than the ceilings. Though nothing much changed, I am monitoring it for the next few days though:



Overall, after I set-up the wireless bridge mode connection with 2 routers, I am super satisfied with the experience so far. Better speeds than an extender and the router UPS means zero down-time caused to Power supply change as a result of DG and BESCOM.

I am however very keen to try out the same with a Dual band secondary router though, just to see how much gain I have in terms of the throughput on 5G compared to the single band 2.4G now on the secondary.

[rajesh1868]

Maybe a noob question.

I don't have broadband at home and have been working with my mobile hotspot.
Now my children's online classes have started and they too are using the same connection.

__
| - My workspace
|
|
__
|- room
|
__ _ not separated by a wall.
|
|- Kids classroom.
|
__

What should I use to extend the range? Is it a repeater? Any recommendations?

In another 2 months, I will be moving to a new place where the distance between our rooms will be even more and not a straight line. I will be getting broadband there. Will a repeater be useless once I have a router?

[smsrini]

would a mesh router like the TPLINK Deco M4 or E4 setup along with the Act fiberlink work better than a wireless bridge ?

[NetfreakBombay]

Originally Posted by rajesh1868

Will a repeater be useless once I have a router?

Repeater will be useful in that scenario as well. Though repeater will reduce WiFi speed, this would usually be good enough for users.

Originally Posted by smsrini

would a mesh router like the TPLINK Deco M4 or E4 .... work better than a wireless bridge ?

It will work as good / bad as a bridge. These are "dual band" devices, same band is shared for traffic from clients and traffic back to router. This might be good enough or not depending on number of devices and speed of broadband.

Either M4/E4 + LAN cable between mesh nodes or Tri-Band mesh is ideal.

[JMaruru]

Originally Posted by Thilak29

https://amzn.to/36gQ8tw (HUAWEI E8372H-155 4G Wingle Data Card)

https://amzn.to/2LME4GM (Tenda 4G680V2.0 3G/4G 300Mbps Wireless N300 4G LTE and Volte Router)

So, what did you opt for?

As many of us are working remote coz of pandemic, should be wealth of information on these devices now.

I am looking for a 4G SIM based USB dongle,

- The device shouldn't heat up for continuous usage of around 5-6 hours.
- Should NOT be locked to any single service provider.
- Which can be plugged into wall power adapters.

Please suggest!

[IamNikhil]

Been using a TP-Link Archer C80 since Sep 2020 and totally satisfied with it's performance. Having had to upgrade the internet connection considering the WFH scenario since last year, needed a device that would do justice to the fiber speed of 100 Mbps and finally zeroed-in on this router after weeks of detailed research. Got a sweet deal from Amazon for 4000 bucks. Was tempted to go for the TP-Link Archer AX10 which was just 500/- more, but then it would still have been a waste considering none of the devices we presently use are WiFi-6 enabled as yet. With the C80, we run a minimum of 9 devices at any given hour of the day: Phones, 2 TVs streaming OTT content, 2 Laptops with heavy video-calling through the day, printer, AC; and this router takes care of the entire load without a hiccup! No speed drop after we've divided the devices properly between the 2 bands. Wall penetration is good too and the range is strong through the house. Absolutely recommended device.

[Thilak29]

Originally Posted by JMaruru

So, what did you opt for? Please suggest!

I ended up buying two separate devices (for different reasons and both serving me well). Both meet all three requirements you mentioned.

- HUAWEI E8372H-155 4G Wingle Data Card (White)
- TP-Link Archer MR200 AC750